Doctor visit

Tamás called down from Budapest to get me an appointment with a neurologist over at the university clinic. Or hospital. Or whatever. I needed to refill my prescriptions and he’d helped me arrange the visit.

I had the careful instructions they’d provided in an email for how to get to the office and pay in advance—8 Semmelweis Street, through the yellow revolving door, up to the mezzanine, cash desk will be on the left. As it turns out, Szeged is not quite as good as Budapest about making sure street numbers are clearly visible. I went very early to be sure I could find the right place.

Well, I did find the yellow revolving door and then the mezzanine. But there was no cash desk on the left. There was a giant nurse station, so I went there. “Tessék,” the nurse said. “Beszélsz angolul?” I asked. “A leetle,” she said. “I’m supposed to pay before I can go see the doctor,” I said. “[blank stare],” she said. “Uh oh,” I thought, as I furiously searched for an email that had somewhere disappeared from my phone.

So we worked through that and she told me I had to walk down the corridor over there to get to reception. That didn’t sound right but my nervous sweat had really started pumping so I decided the best bet was to just get away.*

I was not but 18 hospital rooms down the dim, fluorescent lit corridor before I started to really wonder if this was the right way after all. I passed a doctor coming out of a patient’s room with his clipboard of notes and my Spidey-sense told me to get out of there. I turned on my heel and hightailed it back to the nurse’s station.

Thankfully, the nurse who tried to help before had gone off shift, so I had a whole new nurse to talk to. “Tessék,” she said. “Beszélsz angolul?” I asked. “A leetle,” she said. “Oh good lord,” I thought. Well, I might have thought it out loud, but definitely under my breath. But this time I succeeded in finding my missing email.

She read my phone, nodded knowingly, and said, “Yes, you must go to the kassza desk,” motioning in a direction directly opposite of where the first nurse had sent me. And sure enough, right around the corner was the cash desk. Phew.

So I went there and sat down across from a lovely young woman with a slightly officious, cash-desky attitude about her. “Tessék,” she said through a little talking hole in the plexiglass wall that separated us. “Beszélsz angolul?” I asked, awkwardly leaning down to speak through the hole. “A leetle,” she said. I died a little on the inside.

But she did help me. There was a lot of printing of papers, stamping, stapling, folding, tippety tappety on the computer, and then I was fully paid and ready to go see the doctor.

“Do you know where I can find Dr. Horváth?” I asked. “[shrug],” she said. I almost lost it, but she distracted me by talking with her colleague who jabbered something back at her before she turned back to me and said, “You must walk down that corridor to elevators, floor 4,” she said and then quickly closed the little opening in the plexiglass wall through which we were communicating.

Okay, but at least this time I was paid up and had at least a half hour before my appointment. So I walked down the corridor again and found the elevator lobby. I decided to take the stairs so I wouldn’t be in a hospital elevator punching random buttons. So I walked up to the 4th floor. Which was really the 5th floor because Europe. But really it was the 6th floor because they counted the mezzanine, kind of.

The best part is that on one of the floors was what appeared to be a rolling ambulance or hospital bed that looked like whoever had just been on it just gave, got up, and walked away. For some reason, that worried me.

Anyway, if you’ve come this far with me, you can likely guess that there was no reception on the 4th floor—or whatever the hell floor it was. So I went back down the stairs, past the abandoned hospital bed, to the 1st floor. Or the mezzanine. Or whatever. I showed the man behind the glass my email and he said, “3rd floor.”

So I trudged back up the stairs—again—to the 3rd floor. Which had a long corridor but nothing like an office lobby or waiting room or anything. A nurse was hurrying by and I hijacked her with a polite, “Excuse me.” “Tessék,” she said. “Beszélsz angolul?” I asked. “No,” she said and kept walking.

Another nurse was there and decided to step in. I basically understood that I was to go to the end of the hallway where two older women were sitting in two cafeteria-style chairs. He indicated that the door to the right was the doctor’s office before he, too, disappeared in a puff of smoke.

As you might imagine, I was really sweating now. Not only was I embarrassed and nervous, but the place was clearly kept at a toasty 150° F, no lie. I’d come prepared with my Matlock-style handkerchief to wipe my brow, but it had very nearly absorbed its full capacity. 

When I got to the end of the hallway and was reaching for the doorknob, I heard voices on the other side. I was pretty sure it’s not cool to just barge into a doctor’s examination room even in a foreign country. So I froze.

A super nice nurse came through the door opposite the doctor’s door, and one of the older women told her that I was having trouble. “Tessék,” she said. Nooooooo!

So I switched the script and said, in Hungarian, “I don’t speak Hungarian well.” “Of course you do. You speak it beautifully,” she said in Hungarian. That’s usually code for “try your best.” So I did and she did and I learned that in Hungary you’re meant to go into the hospital, find your doctor’s office, and loiter in the hallway until the doctor comes out and invites you in at some vague time that may or may not match the appointment you’ve made.

This is already getting way too long, but suffice it to say the doctor did come get me. We had an unnecessarily long conversation about why my American doctor had prescribed that particular medicine at that particular dosage. I don’t know, I shrugged. In America we just do what the doctor tells us to do. It doesn’t make sense, he said, you’re taking 3 pills of a small dosage when you could just be taking just one at a higher dosage. Maybe they don’t come in that specific dosage, I said. Yes, it does, he said, I see it right here. Okay, I said, then just prescribe the higher dosage. No, he said, I’ll give you what you asked for. Then why did we just spend 10 minutes talking about it, I screamed silently to myself.

Ultimately, he gave me my two prescriptions, though there was a lot of grumbling about how he had to go find paper for the printer because I wasn’t in the system so he had to issue actual, physical, paper scrips. So much grumbling.

I asked how one went about filling prescriptions in Hungary. Just any drugstore or pharmacy? Yes, he said. Or, he said, “You can go down to the big pharmacy downstairs.” “That’s sounds most convenient,” I said. “Where can I find it” “It’s on the below basement floor,” he said.

Of course, he meant mezzanine.

And FYI, that abandoned hospital bed? Never moved the whole time I was there.

* When it comes to “fight or flight” situations you can always count on me to just smile and nod.